On-demand access to compute resources

ABSTRACT

Disclosed are systems, methods and computer-readable media for controlling and managing the identification and provisioning of resources within an on-demand center as well as the transfer of workload to the provisioned resources. One aspect involves creating a virtual private cluster within the on-demand center for the particular workload from a local environment. A method of managing resources between a local compute environment and an on-demand environment includes detecting an event associated with a local compute environment and based on the detected event, identifying information about the local environment, establishing communication with an on-demand compute environment and transmitting the information about the local environment to the on-demand compute environment, provisioning resources within the on-demand compute environment to substantially duplicate the local environment and transferring workload from the local-environment to the on-demand compute environment. The event can be a threshold or a triggering event within or outside of the local environment.

PRIORITY CLAIM

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/201,245, filed Mar. 15, 2021, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/398,025, filed Apr. 29, 2019 (now U.S. Pat. No. 10,986,037), which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/791,873, filed Jul. 6, 2015 (now U.S. Pat. No. 10,277,531), which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/279,007, filed Apr. 7, 2006 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,075,657), which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/669,278 filed Apr. 7, 2005, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the United States Patent & Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/276,852 11/276,853; 11/276,854; 11/276,855; and 11/276,856 all filed on 16 Mar., 2006. Each of these cases is incorporated herein by reference as well as the corresponding PCT Applications where applicable.

BACKGROUND 1. Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to an on-demand compute environment and more specifically to a system and method of providing access and use of on-demand compute resources from a local compute environment.

2. Introduction

Managers of clusters desire maximum return on investment, often meaning high system utilization and the ability to deliver various qualities of service to various users and groups. A cluster is typically defined as a parallel computer that is constructed of commodity components and runs as its system software commodity software. A cluster contains nodes each containing one or more processors, memory that is shared by all of the processors in the respective node and additional peripheral devices such as storage disks that are connected by a network that allows data to move between nodes. A cluster is one example of a compute environment. Other examples include a grid, which is loosely defined as a group of clusters, and a computer farm which is another organization of computers for processing.

Often a set of resources organized in a cluster or a grid can have jobs to be submitted to the resources that require more capability than the set of resources has available. In this regard, there is a need in the art for being able to easily, efficiently and on-demand utilize new resources or different resources to handle a job. The concept of “on-demand” compute resources has been developing in the high performance computing community recently. An on-demand computing environment enables companies to procure compute power for average demand and then contract remote processing power to help in peak loads or to offload all their compute needs to a remote facility.

Enabling capacity on demand in an easy-to-use manner is important to increasing the pervasiveness of hosting in an on-demand computing environment such as a high performance computing or data center environment. Several entities can provide a version of on-demand capability, but there still exists multi-hour or multi-delays in obtaining access to the environment. The delay is due to the inflexibility of transferring workload because the on-demand centers require participating parties to align to certain hardware, operating systems or resource manager environments. These requirements act as inhibitors to widespread adoption of the use of on-demand centers and make it too burdensome for potential customers to try out the service. Users must pay for unwanted or unexpected charges and costs to make the infrastructure changes for compatibility with the on-demand centers.

Often a set of resources organized in a cluster or a grid can have jobs to be submitted to the resources that require more capability than the set of resource has available. In this regard, there is a need in the art for being able to easily, efficiently and on-demand utilize new resources or different resources to handle a job. The concept of “on-demand” compute resources has been developing in the high performance computing community recently. An on-demand computing environment enables companies to procure compute power for average demand and then contract remote processing power to help in peak loads or to offload all their compute needs to a remote facility. Several reference books having background material related to on-demand computing or utility computing include Mike Ault, Madhu Tumma, Oracle 10 g Grid & Real Application Clusters, Rampant TechPress, 2004 and Guy Bunker, Darren Thomson, Delivering Utility Computing Business-driven IT Optimization, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2006.

In Bunker and Thompson, section 3.3 on page 32 is entitled “Connectivity: The Great Enabler” wherein they discuss how the interconnecting of computers will dramatically increase their usefulness. This disclosure addresses that issue. There exists in the art a need for improved solutions to enable communication and connectivity with an on-demand high performance computing center.

SUMMARY

Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or can be learned by practice of the disclosure. The features and advantages of the disclosure can be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the present disclosure will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or can be learned by the practice of the disclosure as set forth herein.

The disclosure relates to systems, methods and computer-readable media for controlling and managing the identification and provisioning of resources within an on-demand center as well as the transfer of workload to the provisioned resources. One aspect involves creating a virtual private cluster via a reservation of resources within the on-demand center for the particular workload from a local environment. Various embodiments will be discussed next with reference to example methods which can be applicable to systems and computer-readable media.

One aspect relates to a method of managing resources between a local compute environment and an on-demand environment. The method includes detecting an event associated with a local compute environment and, based on the detected event, identifying information about the local environment, establishing a communication with an on-demand compute environment and transmitting the information about the local environment to the on-demand compute environment. The system, at a first time establishes an advanced reservation of resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources. The timing of the advanced reservation is at a second time which is later than the first time. The system then provisions the reserved resources within the on-demand compute environment to substantially duplicate the local compute environment to yield provisional resources and transfers workload from the local compute environment to the reserved, provisional resources in the on-demand compute environment. The event can be a threshold associated with a job processing in the local compute environment or a triggering event within or outside of the local compute environment.

Another aspect of the disclosure provides for a method including generating at least one profile associated with workload that can be processed in a local compute environment, selecting at the local compute environment a profile from the at least one profile, communicating the selected profile from the local compute environment to the on-demand compute environment, reserving resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisioning the reserved resources within the on-demand compute environment according to the selected profile to yield provisional resources and transferring workload from the local-environment to the reserved, provisional resources in the on-demand compute environment.

The step of generating at least one profile associated with workload that can be processed in a compute environment can be performed in advance of receiving job requests on the local compute environment. Further, generating at least one profile associated with workload that can be processed in a compute environment can be performed dynamically as job requests are received on the local compute environment. There can be one or more profiles generated. Furthermore, one or more of the steps of the method can be performed after an operation from a user or an administrator, such as a one-click operation. Any profile of the generated at least one profile can relate to configuring resources that are different from available resources within the local compute environment.

Another aspect provides for a method of integrating an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment. This method includes determining whether a backlog workload condition exists in the local compute environment and, if so, then analyzing the backlog workload, communicating information associated with the analysis to the on-demand compute environment, establishing an advanced reservation of resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisioning the reserved resources in the on-demand compute environment according to the analyzed backlog workload to yield provisional resources and transferring the backlog workload to the provisioned resources in the on-demand compute environment.

Yet another aspect of the disclosure relates to web servers. In this regard, a method of managing resources between a webserver and an on-demand compute environment includes determining whether web traffic directed to the webserver should be at least partially served via the on-demand compute environment, establishing an advanced reservation of resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisioning the reserved resources within the on-demand compute environment to enable it to respond to web traffic for the webserver and to yield provisional resources, establishing a routing of at least part of the web traffic from the webserver to the provisioned resources in the on-demand compute environment and communicating data between a client browser and the on-demand compute environment such that the use of the on-demand compute environment for the web traffic is transparent.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and other advantages and features of the disclosure can be obtained, a more particular description of the disclosure briefly described above will be rendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which are illustrated in the appended documents and drawings. Understanding that these drawings depict only typical embodiments of the disclosure and are not therefore to be considered to be limiting of its scope, the disclosure will be described and explained with additional specificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 illustrates the basic arrangement of the present disclosure;

FIG. 2 illustrates the basic hardware components according to an embodiment of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example graphical interface for use in obtaining on-demand resources;

FIG. 4 illustrates optimization from intelligent data staging;

FIG. 5 illustrates various components of utility-based computing;

FIG. 6 illustrates grid types;

FIG. 7 illustrates grid relationship combinations;

FIG. 8 illustrates graphically a web-server aspect of the disclosure;

FIG. 9 illustrates a method aspect of the disclosure;

FIG. 10 illustrates a method aspect of the disclosure;

FIG. 11 illustrates a method aspect of the disclosure;

FIG. 12 illustrates another method aspect of the disclosure; and

FIG. 13 illustrates another method aspect of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Various embodiments are discussed in detail below. While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations can be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.

In order for hosting centers to obtain the maximum advantage, the hosting centers need to simplify the experience for potential customers, enable a fine-grained control over the sharing of resources and also dynamically adjust what is being provided based on each customer's needs. Additional intelligence control optimizes the delivery of resources so that hosting centers can lower costs and provide competitive offerings that will more easily be adopted and used.

This disclosure relates to the access and management of on-demand or utility computing resources at a hosting center. FIG. 1 illustrates the basic arrangement and interaction between a local compute environment 104 and an on-demand hosting center 102. The local compute environment can include a cluster, a grid, or any other variation of these types of multiple node and commonly managed environments. The on-demand hosting center or on-demand computing environment 102 includes one or more nodes that are available for reservation and provisioning, and preferably has a dedicated node containing a hosting master 128 which can include a slave management module 106 and/or at least one other module, such as the identity manager 112 and node provisioner 118.

Throughout the description, the terms software, workload manager (WM), management module, system and so forth can be used to refer generally to software that performs functions similar to one or more of the Moab™ products from Cluster Resources, Inc., but are certainly not limited to the exact implementation of Moab™ (for example, the Moab Workload Manager®, Moab Grid Monitor®, etc.). Generally, the term “WM” can be used to relate to software that performs the steps being discussed. Such software provides a service for optimization of a local compute environment and according to the principles of the disclosure can also be used to control access to on-demand resources. In terms of local environment control, the software provides an analysis into how & when local resources, such as software and hardware devices, are being used for the purposes of charge-back, planning, auditing, troubleshooting and reporting internally or externally. Such optimization enables the local environment to be tuned to get the most out of the resources in the local compute environment. However, there are times where more resources are needed than are available in the local environment. This is where the on-demand or hosting center can provide additional resources.

The software has detailed knowledge of jobs in a queue that will consume resources in a compute environment. The software schedules, at a first time, advanced reservations in the compute environment such that the reservation of resources is at a second time, later than the first time. For example, if a queue has ten jobs waiting, job number four can be analyzed with other jobs in the queue and the software establishes at noon an advanced reservation to run job number four at 2 PM. In this manner, when 2 PM arrives, job number four has resources already reserved (and have been for two hours), such that job number four will consume, at 2 PM, its reserved resources. FIG. 4 , portion 404 illustrates advanced reservations in the future for jobs.

Typically, a hosting center 102 will have the following attributes. It allows an organization to provide resources or services to customers where the resources or services are custom-tailored to the needs of the customer. Supporting true utility computing usually requires creating a hosting center 102 with one or more capabilities as follows: use of advanced reservations; secure remote access; guaranteed resource availability at a fixed time or series of times; integrated auditing, accounting, and billing services; tiered service level (QoS/SLA) based resource access; dynamic compute node provisioning; full environment management over compute, network, storage, and application/service based resources; intelligent workload optimization; high availability; failure recovery; and automated re-allocation.

A management module 108 enables utility computing by allowing compute resources to be reserved, allocated, and dynamically provisioned to meet the needs of internal or external workload. The management module reserves at a first time specific resources in the environment (local or on-demand) for each job in an access control list. The jobs consume the reserved resources at a second time which is later than the first time. For example, a management module may establish at 1 PM (a first time), an advanced reservation for resources at 4 PM (a second time which is later than a first time). This yields reserved resources (in the local or on-demand environment) which will be consumed by workload at the second time, i.e., workload will flow to the reserved resources for use at the appointed time and consume the resources then. The module 108, 122 knows how the compute environment will be used in the future because each job in a queue has its own reservation of resources and, therefore, the system knows what the workload use will be at any given time. This is distinguishable from a load balancing approach which does not reserve resources for future use. Thus, at peak workload times or based on some other criteria, the local compute environment does not need to be built out with peak usage in mind. As periodic peak resources are required, triggers can cause overflow to the on-demand environment and thus save money for the customer. The module 108 is able to respond to either manual or automatically generated requests and can guarantee resource availability subject to existing service level agreement (SLA) or quality of service (QOS) based arrangements. As an example, FIG. 1 shows a user 110 submitting a job or a query to the cluster or local environment 104. The local environment will typically be a cluster or a grid with local workload. Jobs can be submitted which have explicit resource requirements and will each have an established reservation. Workload can have explicit requirements. The local environment 104 will have various attributes such as operating systems, architecture, network types, applications, software, bandwidth capabilities, etc., which are expected by the job implicitly. In other words, jobs will typically expect that the local environment will have certain attributes that will enable it to consume resources in an expected way. These expected attributes can be duplicated or substantially duplicated in an on-demand environment, or substitute resources (which can be an improvement or less optimal) can be provisioned in the on-demand environment. When accessing the on-demand compute environment, the management module will reserve the necessary resources in the on-demand environment to prepare for the overflow of workload. An example of a duplicated or substantially duplicated environment is when the local environment utilizes Pentium CPUs and the Linux v.2 Operating System. The on-demand center may reserve and provision AMD CPUs or Pentium CPUs and Linux v.3 Operating Systems. Thus, the version of Linux is not exactly the same as in the local environment and is not sufficient to meet the affinity requests of the workload that will be transferred.

Other software is shown by way of example in a distributed resource manager such as Torque 128 and various nodes 130, 132 and 134. The management modules (both master and/or slave) can interact and operate with any resource manager, such as Torque, LSF, SGE, PBS and LoadLeveler and are agnostic in this regard. Those of skill in the art will recognize these different distributed resource manager software packages.

A hosting master or hosting management module 106 can also be an instance of a Moab™ software product with hosting center capabilities to enable an organization to dynamically control network, advanced reservation, compute, application, and storage resources and to dynamically reserve and provision operating systems, security, credentials, and other aspects of a complete end-to-end compute environment. Module 106 is responsible for knowing all the policies, guarantees, promises and also for managing the provisioning of resources within the utility computing space 102. In one sense, module 106 can be referred to as the “master” module in that it couples and needs to know all of the information associated with both the utility environment and the local environment. However, in another sense it can be referred to as the slave module or provisioning broker wherein it takes instructions from the customer management module 108 for provisioning resources and builds whatever environment is requested in the on-demand center 102. A slave module would have none of its own local policies but rather follows all requests from another management module. For example, when module 106 is the slave module, then a master module 108 would submit automated or manual (via an administrator or user) requests that the slave module 106 simply follows to manage the reservations of and build out of the requested environment. Thus, for both IT and end users, a single easily usable interface can increase efficiency; reduce costs, including management costs; and improve investments in the local customer environment. The interface to the local environment, which also has the access to the on-demand environment, can be a web-interface or an access portal. Restrictions of feasibility only can exist. The customer module 108 would have rights and ownership of all resources. The reserved and allocated resources would not be shared, but would be dedicated to the requestor. As the slave module 106 follows all directions from the master module 108, any policy restrictions will preferably occur on the master module 108 in the local environment.

The modules also provide data management services that simplify adding resources from across a local environment. For example, if the local environment includes a wide area network, the management module 108 provides a security model that ensures, when the environment dictates, that administrators can rely on the system even when untrusted resources at the certain level have been added to the local environment or the on-demand environment. In addition, the management modules comply with n-tier web services based architectures and therefore, scalability and reporting are inherent parts of the system. A system operating according to the principles set forth herein also has the ability to track, record and archive information about jobs or other processes that have been run on the system.

A hosting center 102 provides scheduled dedicated resources to customers for various purposes and typically has a number of key attributes: secure remote access, guaranteed resource availability at a fixed time or series of times, tightly integrated auditing/accounting services, varying quality of service levels providing privileged access to a set of users, node image management allowing the hosting center to restore an exact customer-specific image before enabling access. Resources available to a module 106, which can also be referred to as a provider resource broker, will have both rigid (architecture, RAM, local disk space, etc.) and flexible (OS, queues, installed applications etc.) attributes. The provider or on-demand resource broker 106 can typically provision (dynamically modify) flexible attributes, but not rigid attributes. The provider broker 106 can possess multiple resources, each with different types with rigid attributes (i.e., single processor and dual processor nodes, Intel nodes, AMD nodes, nodes with 512 MB RAM, nodes with 1 GB RAM, etc).

This combination of attributes presents unique constraints on a management system. Described herein are how the management modules 108 and 106 are able to effectively manage, modify, reserve, and provision resources in this environment and provide full array of services on top of these resources. The management modules' 108, 120 advanced reservation and policy management tools provide support for the establishment of extensive service level agreements, automated billing, and instant chart and report creation. By knowing the list of jobs to be run in the local/on-demand compute environments, the management modules can make, at a first time, reservations for future consumption of resources at a second time, which is later than the first time, by the jobs and more intelligently know what the resource usage will be in the future, thus allowing the system to know, for example, that the local environment will need on-demand resources in an hour. Thus, as shown in FIG. 1 , the system can reserve, provision and use resources in the on-demand center for overflow workload from the local compute environment. Each job has an allocated reservation of resources for those resources it will consume when the job is transferred into the compute environment.

Utility-based computing technology allows a hosting center 102 to quickly harness existing compute resources, dynamically co-allocate the resources, and automatically provision them into a seamless virtual cluster. U.S. application Ser. No. 11/276,852 incorporated herein by reference above, discloses a virtual private cluster (VPC). The process involves aggregating compute resources and establishing partitions of the aggregated compute resources. Then the system presents only the partitioned resources accessible by an organization to use within the organization. Thus, in the on-demand center 102, as resources are needed, the control and establishment of an environment for workload from a local environment can occur via the means of creating, via reservations, a virtual private cluster for the local user workload within reserved, provisioned resources in the on-demand compute environment 120. Note that further details regarding the creation and use of VPCs are found in the '852 application. In each case discussed herein where on-demand compute resources are identified, reserved, provisioned and consumed by local environment workload, the means by which this is accomplished can be through the creation of a VPC within the on-demand center.

Also shown in FIG. 1 are several other components such as an identity manager 112 and a node provisioner 118 as part of the hosting center 102. The hosting master 128 can include an identity manager interface 112 that can coordinate global and local information regarding users, groups, accounts, and classes associated with compute resources. The identity manager interface 112 can also allow the management module 106 to automatically and dynamically create and modify user accounts and credential attributes according to current workload needs. The hosting master 128 allows sites extensive flexibility when it comes to defining credential access, attributes, and relationships. In most cases, use of the USERCFG, GROUPCFG, ACCOUNTCFG, CLASSCFG, and QOSCFG parameters is adequate to specify the needed configuration. However, in certain cases, such as the following, this approach is not ideal or even adequate: environments with very large user sets; environments with very dynamic credential configurations in terms of fairshare targets, priorities, service access constraints, and credential relationships; grid environments with external credential mapping information services; enterprise environments with fairness policies based on multi-cluster usage.

The modules 108, 106, 120 address these and similar issues through the use of the identity manager 112. The identity manager 112 allows the module to exchange information with an external identity management service. As with the module's resource manager interfaces, this service can be a full commercial package designed for this purpose, or something far simpler by which the module obtains the needed information for a web service, text file, or database.

Next, attention is turned to the node provisioner 118. As an example of its operation, the node provisioner 118 can enable the allocation of resources in the hosting center 102 for workload from a local compute environment 104. As mentioned above, one aspect of this process can be to create a VPC within the hosting center as directed by the module 108. Reservations of resources in the hosting center are used to create the VPC, or to reserve resources in the on-demand compute environment that can be provisioned on the VPC. The customer management module 108 will communicate with the hosting management module 106 to begin the provisioning process. In one aspect, the provisioning module 118 can generate another instance of necessary management software 120 and 122 which will be created in the hosting center environment as well as compute nodes 124 and 126 to be consumed by a submitted job at the time of their reservation. The new management module 120 is created on the fly, can be associated with a specific request and will preferably be operative on a dedicated node. If the new management module 120 is associated with a specific request or job, as the job consumes the reserved resources associated with the provisioned compute nodes 124, 126, and the job completes, then the system can remove the management module 120 since it was only created for the specific request. The new management module 120 can connect to other modules such as module 108. The module 120 does not necessarily have to be created but can be generated on the fly as necessary to assist in communication, reservations, and provisioning and use of the resources in the utility environment 102. For example, the module 106 can go ahead and reserve and allocate nodes within the utility computing environment 102 and connect these nodes directly to module 108 but in that case you can lose some batch ability as a tradeoff. The hosting master 128 having the management module 106, identity manager 112 and node provisioner 118 preferably is co-located with the utility computing environment but can be distributed. The management module 108 on the local environment 104 can then communicate directly with the created management module 120 in the hosting center 102 to manage the transfer of workload and consumption of on-demand center resources. Created management module 120 can be part of a VPC.

With reference to FIG. 2 , an exemplary system for implementing the disclosure includes a general purpose computing device 200, including a processing unit (CPU) 220, a system memory 230, and a system bus 210 that couples various system components including the system memory 230 to the processing unit 220. The system bus 210 can be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. The system can also include other memory such as read only memory (ROM) 240. A basic input/output (BIOS), containing the basic routine that helps to transfer information between elements within the computing device 200, such as during start-up, is typically stored in ROM 240. The computing device 200 further includes storage means such as a hard disk drive 250, a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, tape drive or the like. The storage device 260 is connected to the system bus 210 by a drive interface. The drives and the associated computer-readable media provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the computing device 200. The basic components are known to those of skill in the art and appropriate variations are contemplated depending on the type of device, such as whether the device is a small, handheld computing device, a desktop computer, or a computer server.

Although the exemplary environment described herein employs the hard disk, it should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other types of computer readable media which can store data that is accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, memory cartridges, random access memories (RAMs) read only memory (ROM), and the like, can also be used in the exemplary operating environment. The system above provides an example server or computing device that can be utilized and networked with a cluster, clusters or a grid to manage the resources according to the principles set forth herein. It is also recognized that other hardware configurations can be developed in the future upon which the method can be operable.

As mentioned a concept useful but not necessary for enabling the technology include an easy-to-use capacity on-demand feature and dynamic VPCs. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/276,852 filed 16 Mar., 2006 referenced above provide further details regarding VPCs and the capability is enabled in the incorporated source code in the parent provisional application. Regarding the easy-to-use capacity on demand, FIG. 3 illustrates an example interface 300 that a user can utilize to connect to an on-demand center by a simple configuration of several parameters on each site. These parameters can be pre-configured and activated in a manner as simple as using an “enable now” button 302. Preferably, license terms and agreement can be prepackaged or accepted with the software's other licenses during an installation process or can be reviewed via a web form as a response to activating the service. The administrator can configure the resource requirements 308 in the on-demand center easily to control how many simultaneous processors, nodes, and so forth can be reserved and used in the on-demand center. Other parameters can be set such as the size of incremental steps, minimum duration and processor hours per month. The interface 300 also includes example capabilities such as customizing capacity limits 304, customizing service level policies 306 and other outsourcing permissions. For example, the user can vary the permissions of users, groups, classes and accounts with outsourcing permissions.

As can be seen in interface 300, there are other parameters shown such as maximum capacity and service level limits, and wall time limits and quality of service levels. Thus a user can provide for a customized approach to utilizing the on-demand center. The user can enable service level enforcement policies and apply the policies to various gradations of the workload, such as to all workload with excessive wait times, only high priority workload with excessive wait time and/or only workload with excessive wait time that has the outsource flag applied. Other gradations are also contemplated, such as enabling the user to further define “excessive” wait time or how high the high priority workload is.

The dynamic VPC enables for the packaging, securing, optimizing and guaranteeing of the right resource delivery in cluster, grid and hosting center environments. The VPC is used to virtually partition multiple types of resources (such as different hardware resources, software licenses, VLANs, storage, etc.) into units that can be treated as independent clusters. These independent virtual clusters can have their own policy controls, security, resource guarantees, optimization, billing and reporting. The VPC uses the management software's scheduling, reservation and policy controls to automatically change the virtual boundaries to match the required resources to the associated workload. For example, if a client first needed resources from a traditional Linux compute farm, but then over time had workload that increasingly needed SMP resources, the dynamic VPC could optimally adapt the correct resources to match the workload requirements. The dynamic VPC provides flexibility to manage and modify the resources in the on-demand center. Otherwise, the hosting services are too rigid, causing clients to go through the tasks of redefining and renegotiating which resources are provided or causing them to pay for resources that didn't match their changing needs.

Other differentiators enabled in the management software include detailed knowledge and fine grained control of workload which includes workload allocation (CPU vs. data intensive workload), optimized data staging, resource affinity, highly optimized resource co-allocation, provisioning integration, and integration security management. Service level enforcement controls relate to guaranteed response times and guaranteed uptime. There are broad management capabilities such as multi-resource manager support and flexibility in management modules such as single system images. More details about these features follow.

Regarding workload allocation, one of the intelligence capabilities enabled by the detailed knowledge and control over workload is its ability to differentiate between CPU-intensive and data-intensive workload. When the software schedules, via advanced reservations, HPC workload for a hosting center, it can automatically send the more CPU-intensive workload to the hosting site, while focusing the data-intensive workload locally. This means that jobs with large data files do not need to tie up networks, and the approach reduces the total response time of the clients' workload. Clients are more satisfied because their work gets done sooner and the hosting center is more satisfied because it can process workload that is most profitable to the “CPU Hour” billing model.

Optimized data staging is another aspect of the software's detailed knowledge and control of workload. This technology increases the performance of data-intensive workload by breaking a job's reservation into the two, three (or more) elements of pre-staging data, processing workload and staging results back. Each job in a queue can have its own reservation of resources such that the software has detailed knowledge of resources that will be consumed in the future for jobs in the queue. Other scheduling technologies reserve the processor and other resources on a node for the duration of all three, leaving the CPU idle during data staging and the I/O capacity virtually idle during the processing period. The management software of the present disclosure has an information querying service that analyzes both file and network information services and then intelligently schedules all two or three processes in an optimized manner. The I/O capacity is scheduled, via advanced reservations, to avoid conflict between data staging periods, and CPU scheduling is optimized to allow for the most complete use of the underlying processor. Once again, this assists the end client in getting more accomplished in a shorter period of time, and optimizes the hosting providers' resources to avoid idle CPU time. FIG. 4 illustrates how intelligent data staging works. The top portion 402 of this figure shows the traditional method of reserving an entire node, including the CPU, for the entire data staging, compute time, and staging back. The top row of the top portion 402 shows CPU usage and blank spaces reporting idle CPU time. The bottom row shows I/O capacity being used for pre-staging and staging back, but idle during CPU usage. As is shown in FIG. 4 , the top portion 402 only completes three jobs. The bottom half 404 shows how the management module schedules reservations such that the data staging and processing to overlap and thus optimize workload. The “events” utilize the CPU during the prestaging and stage back periods rather than leaving the CPU idle during those times. In portion 404, 7.5 jobs are shown as being completed via the reservations and “events,” which can be CPU time reserved for other jobs. This provides efficient use of CPU cycle and network resources. Row 404 illustrates how reservations exist in a compute environment over time (on the horizontal axis). Four reservations are established for four jobs and eight events are shown as also filling in CPU time during prestaging and staging back. Thus, other jobs can fill the CPU available time reserved by the “events.”

Regarding resource affinity, the management module 108, 120 leverages its detailed knowledge of workload requests and reservations in the compute environment, by applying jobs to the resource type able to provide the fastest response time. For example, if a job is likely to run faster on AIX over Linux, on an SMP system as opposed to a traditional CPU farm, or performs better on a specific network type, such affinities can be configured manually or set automatically to occur so that workload is optimized The management modules 108, 120 also have the capability to track these variables and apply higher charge rates to those using the more costly systems.

The management modules 108, 120 associate workload requests with service level enforcement controls, such as guaranteeing response time and guaranteeing uptime. This is accomplished through intelligent use of advanced reservations. It is noted that on-demand high performance computing centers can therefore manage service level enforcement, or else their clientele will never repeat business. An application of this capability includes setting rules that automatically push all of a site's backlogged workload over to a hosting center. This capability can be referred to as workload surge protection. The advanced scheduling algorithms and policy management capabilities can be set to meet these needs by reserving resources in the hosting center for the backlogged workload overflow. Below are sample industries that have specific needs for such guarantees: Homeland Security (guarantee response times, as well as guarantee uptime, workload surge protection); and National Institute of Health (desires the software guarantee resources in the event of a national crisis, up to the point of preempting all other jobs across the entire grid). This feature, called “Run Now,” provides the required guaranteed immediate response time. To do so it performs a host of complex queries to provide the response time at the lowest possible cost to participating sites. The software can achieve this by running through more than 8 levels (any number can apply) of increasingly aggressive policies to provide the resources-starting with the least impacting levels and fully exhausting its options prior to increasing to the next more aggressive level. Similarly, the software's intelligence allows hosting sites to provide promised SLA levels that keep the client fully satisfied, while providing the highest possible return to the hosting provider; multi-media-film, gaming, simulation and other rendering intense areas (guarantee response time); oil & gas (guarantee response time, workload surge protection); Aerospace (guarantee response time); Financial (guarantee uptime and guarantee response time, workload surge protection); Manufacturers-Pharmaceuticals, Auto, Chip and other “First to Market” intense industries (guarantee response time, workload surge protection). As can be seen, the software provides features applicable in many markets.

Another feature relates to the software's architecture which allows for simultaneous monitoring, reserving, scheduling, and managing of multiple resource types, and can be deployed across different environments or used as a central point of connection for distinct environments. Regarding the broad compatibility, the software's server-side elements work on at least Linux, Unix and Mac OS X environments (it can manage Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, Windows and mainframe environments-depending on what the local resource manager supports). The client-side software works on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows environments as well as other environments.

Multi-resource manager support enables the software to work across virtually all mainstream compute resource managers. These compute resource managers include, but are not limited to, LoadLeveler, LSF, PBSPro, TORQUE, OpenPBS and others. Not only does this increase the number of environments in which it can be used to provide capacity on demand capabilities, but it leaves the customer with a larger set of options going forward because it doesn't lock them into one particular vendor's solution. Also, with multi-resource manager support, the software can interoperate with multiple compute resource managers at the same time, thus allowing grid capabilities even in mixed environments.

Beyond the traditional compute resource manager that manages job submission to compute nodes, the software can integrate with storage resource managers, network resource managers, software license resource managers, etc. It uses this multiplicity of information sources to make its policy decisions more effective. The software can also connect up to hardware monitors such as Ganglia, custom scripts, executables and databases to get additional information that most local compute resource managers would not have available. This additional information can be queried and evaluated by the software or an administrator to be applied to workload reservation and placement decisions and other system policies.

FIG. 5 illustrates graphically 500 how the software integrates with other technologies. The items along the bottom are resource types such as storage, licenses, and networks. The items on the left are interface mechanisms for end users and administrators. Items on the right side of the figure are service with which the software can integrate to provide additional extended capabilities such as provisioning, database-centric reporting and allocation management. The example software packages shown in FIG. 5 are primarily IBM products but of course other software can be integrated.

Regarding the flexibility of management models, the software enables providing the capacity on demand capability any supported cluster environment or grid environment. The software can be configured to enable multiple grid types and management models. The two preferable grid types enabled by the software are local area grids and wide area grids, although others are also enabled. FIG. 6 illustrates 600 examples of various grid types as well as various grid management scenarios. A “Local Area Grid” (LAG) uses one instance of a workload manager WM, such as Moab, within an environment that shares a user and data space across multiple clusters, which can have multiple hardware types, operating systems and compute resource managers (e.g. LoadLeveler, TORQUE, LSF, PBSPro, etc.). The benefits of a LAG are that it is very easy to set up and even easier to manage. In essence all clusters are combined in a LAG using one instance of the W M, eliminating redundant policy management and reporting. The clusters appear to be a mixed set of resources in a single big cluster. A “Wide Area Grid” (WAG) uses multiple WM instances working together within an environment that can have one or more user and data spaces across various clusters, which can have mixed hardware types, operating systems and compute resource managers (e.g. LoadLeveler, TORQUE, LSF, PBSPro, etc.). WAG management rules can be centralized, locally controlled or mixed. The benefit of a WAG is that an organization can maintain the sovereign management of its own local cluster, while still setting strict or relaxed political sharing policies of its resources to the outside grid. Collaboration can be facilitated with a very flexible set of optional policies in the areas of ownership, control, information sharing and privacy. Sites are able to choose how much of their cluster's resources and information they share with the outside grid.

Grids are inherently political in nature and flexibility to manage what information is shared and what information is not is central to establishing such grids. Using the software, administrators can create policies to manage information sharing in difficult political environments.

Organizations can control information sharing and privacy in at least three different ways: (1) Allow all resource (e.g. nodes, storage, etc.), workload (e.g. jobs, reservations, etc.) and policy (e.g. sharing and prioritization rules) information to be shared to provide full accounting and reporting; (2) Allow other sites to only see resource, workload and policy information that pertains to them so that full resource details can be kept private and more simplified; (3) Allow other sites to only see a single resource block, revealing nothing more than the aggregate volume of resources available for reservation and use by to the other site. This allows resources, workload and policy information to be kept private, while still allowing shared relationships to take place. For example, a site that has 1,024 processors can publicly display only 64 processors to other sites on the grid.

The above mentioned grid types and management scenarios can be combined together with the information sharing and privacy rules to create custom relationships that match the needs of the underlying organizations. FIG. 7 illustrates an example of how grids can be combined. Many combinations are possible.

The software is able to facilitate virtually any grid relationship such as by joining local area grids into wide area grids, joining wide area grids to other wide area grids (whether they be managed centrally, locally-“peer to peer,” or mixed); sharing resources in one direction (e.g. for use with hosting centers or lease out one's own resources); enabling multiple levels of grid relationships (e.g. conglomerates within conglomerates). As can be appreciated, the local environment can be one of many configurations as discussed by way of example above.

Various aspects of the disclosure with respect to accessing an on-demand center from a local environment will be discussed next. One aspect relates to enabling the automatic detection of an event such as resource thresholds or service thresholds within the compute environment 104. For example, if a threshold of 95% of processor consumption is met because 951 processors out of the 1000 processors in the environment are being utilized, then the WM 108 can automatically establish a connection with the on-demand environment 102. A service threshold, a policy-based threshold, a hardware-based threshold or any other type of threshold can trigger the communication to the hosting center 102. Other events as well can trigger communication with the hosting center such as a workload backlog having a certain configuration. The WM 108 then can communicate with WM 106 to reserve resources, and then provision or customize the reserved on-demand resources 102. The creation of a VPC within the on-demand center can occur. The two environments exchange the necessary information to create reservations of resources, provision the resources, manage licensing, and so forth, necessary to enable the automatic transfer of jobs or other workload from the local environment 104 to the on-demand environment 102. Nothing about a user job 110 submitted to a WM 108 changes. The physical environment of the local compute environment 104 can also be replicated in the on-demand center. The on-demand environment 102 then instantly begins running the job without any change in the job or perhaps even any knowledge of the submitter.

In another aspect, predicted events can also be triggers. For example, a predicted failure of nodes within the local environment, predicted events internal or external to the environment, or predicted meeting of thresholds can trigger communication with the on-demand center. These are all configurable and can either automatically trigger the migration of jobs or workload or can trigger a notification to the user or administrator to make a decision regarding whether to migrate workload or access the on-demand center.

Regarding the analysis and transfer of backlog workload, the method embodiment provides for determining whether a backlog workload condition exists in the local compute environment. If the backlog workload condition exists, then the system analyzes the backlog workload, communicates information associated with the analysis to the on-demand compute environment, establishes a reservation of resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisions the reserved resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield provisional resources in the on-demand compute environment according to the analyzed backlog workload and transfers the backlog workload to the provisioned resources. It is preferable that the provisioning the on-demand compute environment further includes establishing a reservation of resources to create a virtual private cluster within the on-demand compute environment. Analyzing the workload can include determining at least one resource type associated with the backlog workload for provisioning in the on-demand compute environment.

In another aspect, analyzing the backlog workload, communicating the information associated with analysis to the on-demand compute environment, reserving resources at a future time in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisioning the reserved resources in the on-demand compute environment according to the analyzed backlog workload and transferring the backlog workload to the provisioned resources in the on-demand compute environment occurs in response to a one-click operation from an administrator. However, the process of reserving, provisioning and transferring backlog workload to the on-demand center can begin based on any number of events. For example, a user can interact with a user interface to initiate the transfer of backlog workload. An internal event such as a threshold, for example, a wait time reaching a maximum, can be an event that could trigger the analysis and transfer. An external event can also trigger the transfer of backlog workload such as a terrorist attack, weather conditions, power outages, etc.

There are several aspects to this disclosure that are shown in the attached source code. One is the ability to exchange information. For example, for the automatic transfer of workload to the on-demand center, the system will import remote classes, configuration policy information, physical hardware information, operating systems and other information from environment 102 the WM 108 to the slave WM 106 for use by the on-demand environment 102. Information regarding the on-demand compute environment, resources, policies and so forth are also communicated from the slave WM 106 to the local WM 108.

A method embodiment can therefore provide a method of managing resources between a local compute environment and an on-demand compute environment. An exemplary method includes detecting an event associated with a local compute environment. As mentioned the event can be any type of trigger or threshold. The software then identifies information about the local compute environment, establishes communication with an on-demand compute environment and transmits the information about the local environment to the on-demand compute environment. With that information, the software establishes at a first time an advanced reservation of resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, and then provisions the reserved resources within the on-demand compute environment to duplicate or substantially duplicate the local compute environment and transfers workload from the local-environment to the provisional resources in the on-demand compute environment. The workload consumes the provisional resources at a second time which is later than the first time. In another aspect, the provisioning does not necessarily duplicate the local environment but specially provisions the on-demand environment for the workload to be migrated to the on-demand center. As an example, the information communicated about the local environment can relate to at least hardware and/or an operating system. But the workload to be transferred to the on-demand center may have an affinity to hardware and/or an operating system that differs from that in the local compute environment. Therefore, the software can request different hardware and/or software in the on-demand center from the configuration of the local compute environment. Establishing communication with the on-demand compute environment and transmitting the information about the local environment to the on-demand compute environment can be performed automatically or manually via a user interface. Using such an interface can enable the user to provide a one-click or one action request to establish the communication and migrate workload to the on-demand center.

In some cases, as the software seeks to reserve and provision resources, a particular resource cannot be duplicated in the on-demand compute environment. In this scenario, the software will identify and select a substitute resource. This process of identifying and selecting a substitute resource can be accomplished either at the on-demand environment or via negotiation between a slave workload manager 120 at the on-demand environment and a master workload manager 108 on the local compute environment. The method further can include identifying a type of workload to transfer to the on-demand environment 102, and wherein transferring workload from the local-environment 104 to the on-demand compute environment 102 further includes only transferring the identified type of workload to the on-demand center. In another aspect, the transferring of the identified type of workload to the on-demand center 102 is based upon different hardware and/or software capabilities between the on-demand environment and the local compute environment.

Another aspect of the disclosure is the ability to automate data management between two sites. This involves the transparent handling of data management between the on-demand environment 102 and the local environment 104 that is transparent to the user. In other words, it can be accomplished without explicit action or configuration by the user. It can also be unknown to the user. Yet another aspect relates to a simple and easy mechanism to enable on-demand center integration. This aspect of the disclosure involves the ability of the user or an administrator to, in a single action like the click of a button, the touching of a touch sensitive screen, motion detection, or other simple action, command the integration of an on-demand center information and capability into the local WM 108. In this regard, the system will be able to automatically exchange and integrate all the necessary information and resource knowledge in a single click to broaden the set of resources that can be available to users who have access initially only to the local compute environment 104. The information can include the various aspect of available resources at the on-demand center such as time-frame, cost of resources, resource type, etc.

One of the aspects of the integration of an on-demand environment 102 and a local compute environment 104 is that the overall data appears locally. In other words, the WM 108 will have access to the resources and knowledge of the on-demand environment 102 but the view of those resources, with the appropriate adherence to local policy requirements, is handled locally and appears locally to users and administrators of the local environment 104.

Another aspect is enabled with the attached source code is the ability to specify configuration information associated with the local environment 104 and feeding it to the hosting center 102. For example, the interaction between the compute environments supports static reservations. A static reservation is a reservation that a user or an administrator cannot change, remove or destroy. It is a reservation that is associated with the WM 108 itself. A static reservation blocks out time frames when resources are not available for other uses. For example, if, to enable a compute environment to run (consume) resources, a job takes an hour to provision a resource, then the WM 108 can establish a static reservation of resources for the provisioning process. The WM 108 will locally create a static reservation for the provisioning component of running the job. The WM 108 will report on these constraints associated with the created static reservation.

Then, the WM 108 can communicate with the slave WM 106 if on-demand resources are needed to run a job. The WM 108 communicates with the slave WM 106 and identifies what resources are needed (20 processors and 512 MB of memory, for example) and inquires when can those resources be available. Assume that WM 106 responds that the processors and memory will be available in one hour and that the WM 108 can have those resources for 36 hours. The system can establish a normal reservation of the processors and memory in the on-demand center starting in an hour and lasting for 36 hours. Once all the appropriate information has been communicated between the WM 106 and WM 108, then WM 108 creates a static reservation in the on-demand center to block the first part of the resources which requires the one hour of provisioning. The WM 108 can also block out the resources with a static reservation from hour 36 to infinity until the resources go away. Therefore, from zero to one hour is blocked out by a static reservation and from the end of the 36 hours to infinity is blocked out with a static reservation. In this way, the scheduler 108 can optimize the on-demand resources and insure that they are available for local workloads. The communication between the WMs 106 and 108 is performed preferably via tunneling.

Yet another aspect is the ability to have a single agent such as the WM 108 or some other software agent detect a parameter, event or configuration in the local environment 104. The environment in this sense includes both hardware and software and other aspects of the environment. For example, a cluster environment 104 can have, besides the policies and restrictions on users and groups as discussed above, a certain hardware/software configuration such as a certain number of nodes, a certain amount of memory and disk space, operating systems and software loaded onto the nodes and so forth. The agent (which can be WM 108 or some other software module) determines the physical aspects of the compute environment 104 and communicates with the on-demand hosting center to provide an automatic reservation of and provisioning of reserved resources within the center 102 such that the local environment is duplicated. The duplication can match the same hardware/software configuration or can may dynamically or manually substitute alternate components. The communication and transfer of workload to a replicated environment within the hosting center 102 can occur automatically (say at the detection of a threshold value) or at the push of a button from an administrator. Therefore information regarding the local environment is examined and the WM 108 or another software agent transfers that information to the hosting center 102 for replication.

The replication, therefore, involves providing the same or perhaps similar number of nodes, provisioning operating systems, file system architecture and memory and any other hardware or software aspects of the hosting center 102 using WM 106 to replicate the compute environment 104. Those of skill in the art will understand that other elements that can need to be provisioned to duplicate the environment. Where the exact environment cannot be replicated in the hosting center 102, decisions can be made by the WM 106 or via negotiation between WM 106 and WM 108 to determine an alternate provisioning.

In another aspect, a user of the compute environment 104 such as an administrator can configure at the client site 104 a compute environment and when workload is transferred to the hosting center 102, the desired compute environment can be provisioned. In other words, the administrator could configure a better or more suited environment than the compute environment 104 that exists. As an example, a company can want to build a compute environment 104 that will be utilized by processor intensive jobs and memory intensive jobs. It can be cheaper for the administrator of the environment 104 to build an environment that is better suited to the processor intensive jobs. The administrator can configure a processor intensive environment at the local cluster 104 and when a memory intensive job 110 is submitted, the memory intensive environment can be reserved and provisioned in the hosting center 102 to offload that job.

In this regard, the administrator can generate profiles of various configurations for various “one-click” provisioning on the hosting center 102. For example, the administrator can have profiles for compute intensive jobs, memory intensive jobs, types of operating system, types of software, any combination of software and hardware requirements and other types of environments. Those of skill in the art will understand the various types of profiles that can be created. The local cluster 104 has a relationship with the hosting center 102 where the administrator can transfer workload based on one of the one or more created profiles. This can be done automatically if the WM 108 identifies a user job 110 that matches a profile or can be done manually by the administrator via a user interface that can be graphical. The administrator can be able to, in “one click,” select the option to have resources in the on-demand center reserved and provisioned to receive a memory intensive component of the workload to process according to the memory-intensive profile.

The relationship between the hosting center 102 and the local cluster 104 by way of arranging for managing the workload can be established in advance or dynamically. The example above illustrates the scenario where the arrangement is created in advance where profiles exist for selection by a system or an administrator. The dynamic scenario can occur where the local administrator for the environment 104 has a new user with a different desired profile than the profiles already created. The new user wants to utilize the resources 104. Profiles configured for new users or groups can be manually added and/or negotiated between the hosting center 102 and the local cluster 104 or can be automatic. There can be provisions made for the automatic identification of a different type of profile and WM 108 (or another module) can communicate with WM 106 (or another module) to arrange for the availability/capability of the on-demand center to handle workload according to the new profile and to arrange cost, etc. If no new profile can be created, then a default or generic profile, or the closest previously existing profile to match the needs of the new user's job can be selected. In this manner, the system can easily and dynamically manage the addition of new users or groups to the local cluster 104.

In this regard, when WM 108 submits a query to the WM 106 stating that it needs a certain set of resources, it passes the profile(s) as well. Receiving resource requirement information may be based on user specification, current or predicted workload. The specification of resources may be one of fully explicit, partially explicit, fully implicit based on workload, and based on virtual private cluster (VPC) package concept where VPC package can include aspects of allocated or provisioning support environment and adjustments to resource request timeframes including pre-allocation, allocation duration, and post-allocation timeframe adjustments. The incorporated application above includes the discussion of virtual private clusters which are completely applicable and integrated into this disclosure and capability with on-demand centers. The reserved resources may be associated with provisioning or customizing the delivered compute environment. A reservation may involve the co-allocation of resources including any combination of compute, network, storage, license, or service resources (i.e., parallel database services, security services, provisioning services) as part of a reservation across multiple different resource types. Also, the co-allocation of resources over disjoint timeframes to improve availability and utilization of resources may be part of a reservation or a modification of resources. Resources may also be reserved with automated failure handling and resource recovery. WM 106 identifies when resources are available in static dimensions (such as identifies that a certain amount of memory, nodes and/or other types of architecture are available). This step will identify whether the requestor obtains the raw resources to meet those needs. Then the WM 106 will manage the customer install and provisioning of the software, operating systems, and so forth according to the received profile. In this manner, the entire specification of needs according to the profile can be met.

Another aspect of the disclosure relates to looking at the workload overflowing to the hosting center. The system can customize the environment for the particular overflow workload. This was referenced above. The agent 108 can examine the workload on the local cluster 104 and determine what part of that workload or if all of that workload, can be transferred to the hosting center 102. The agent identifies whether the local environment is overloaded with work and what type of work is causing the overload. The agent can preemptively identify workload that would overload the local environment or can dynamically identify overload work being processed. For example, if a job 110 is submitted that is both memory intensive and processor intensive, the WM 108 will recognize that and intelligently communicate with the WM 106 to transfer the processor intensive portion of the workload to reserve resources in the hosting center 102. This can be preferable for several reasons. Perhaps it is cheaper to utilize hosting center 102 processing time for processor intensive time. Perhaps the local environment 104 is more suited to the memory intensive component of the workload. Also, perhaps restrictions such as bandwidth, user policies, current reservations in the local 104 or hosting 102 environment and so forth can govern where workload is processed. For example, the decision of where to process workload can be in response to the knowledge that the environment 104 is not as well suited for the processor intensive component of the workload or due to other jobs running or scheduled to run in the environment 104. As mentioned above, the WM 106 manages the proper reservation and provisioning of resources in the hosting center environment for the overflow workload.

Where the agent has identified a certain type of workload that is causing the overload, the system can automatically reserve and provision resources in the hosting center to match the overload workload and then transfer that workload over.

As another example of how this works, a threshold can be met for work being processed on the local cluster 104. The threshold can be met by how much processing power is being used, how much memory is available, whether the user has hit a restriction on permissions, and/or a determination that a quality of service has not been met or any other parameter. Once that threshold is met, either automatically or via an administrator, a button can be pressed and WM 108 analyzes the workload on the environment 104. The WM 108 can identify that there is a backlog and determine that more nodes are needed (or more of any specific type of resource is needed). The WM 108 will communicate with WM 106 to enable, at a first time, the creation of an advanced reservation of resources in the hosting center. The WM 108/106 autoprovisions the reserved resources within the hosting center to meet the needs of the backlogged jobs. The appropriate resources, hardware, software, permissions and policies can be duplicated exactly or in an acceptable fashion to resolve the backlog. Further, the autoprovisioning can be performed with reference to the backlog workload needs rather than the local environment configuration. In this respect, the overflow workload is identified and analyzed and the reservation and provisioning in the hosting center is matched to the workload itself (in contrast to matching the local environment) for processing when the backlog workload is transferred. The reservation of the resources is for a second time which is later than the first time. Thus, the workload is transferred such that the reservation insures that the reserved resources are available for the workload. Therefore, the reservation and provisioning can be based on a specific resource type that will resolve most efficiently the backlog workload.

One aspect of this disclosure relates to the application of the concepts above to provide a website server with backup computing power via a hosting center 102. This aspect of the disclosure is shown by the system 800 in FIG. 8 . The hosting center 102 and WM 106 are configured as discussed above and adjustment as necessary are made to communicate with a webserver 802. A website version of the workload manager (WM) 804 would operate on the webserver 302. Known adjustments are made to enable the Domain Name Service (DNS) to provide for setting up the overflow of network traffic to be directed to either the web server 802 or the hosting center 102. In another aspect, the webserver would preferably handle all of the rerouting of traffic to the on-demand center once it was reserved and provisioned for overflow web traffic. In another aspect, a separate network service can provide the control of web traffic control directed to either the webserver or the on-demand center. One of skill in the art will understand the basic information about how internet protocol (IP) packets of information are routed between a web browser on a client compute device and a web server 802.

In this regard, the WM 804 would monitor the web traffic 306 and resources on the web server 802. The web server 802 of course can be a cluster or group of servers configured to provide a website. The WM 804 is configured to treat web traffic 806 and everything associated with how the web traffic consumes resources within the web server 802 as a job or a group of jobs. An event such as a threshold is detected by WM 804. If the threshold is passed or the event occurs, the WM 804 communicates with the WM 106 of the hosting center 102, the WM 106 establishes an advanced reservation of resources to yield reserved resources and then autoprovisions the reserved resources and enables web traffic to flow to the autoprovisioned resources in the hosting center 102 where the requests would be received and webpages and web content is returned. The provisioning of resources can also be performed manually for example in preparation for increased web traffic for some reason. As an example, if an insurance company knows that a hurricane is coming it can provide for and prepare for increased website traffic.

The management of web traffic 806 to the webserver 802 and to the hosting center 102 can also be coordinated such that a portion of the requests go directly to the hosting center 102 or are routed from the web server 802 to the hosting center 102 for response. For example, once the provisioning in the reserved resources in the hosting center 102 is complete, an agent (which can communicate with the WM 804) can then intercept web traffic directed to the web server 302 and direct it to the hosting center 102, which can deliver website content directly to the client browser (not shown) requesting the information. Those of skill in the art will recognize that there are several ways in which web traffic 806 can be intercepted and routed to the provisioned reserved resources at the hosting center 102 such that it is transparent to the client web browser that a hosting center 102 rather than the web server 802 is servicing the web session.

The identification of the threshold can be based on an increase of current traffic or can be identified from another source. For example, if the New York Times or some other major media outlet mentions a website, that event can cause a predictable increase in traffic. In this regard, one aspect of the disclosure is a monitoring of possible triggers to increased web activity. The monitoring can be via a Google (or any type of) automatic search of the website name in outlets like www.nytimes.com, www.washingtonpost.com or www.powerlineblog.com. If the website is identified in these outlets, then an administrator or automatically the provisioning of reserved resources can occur at a predictable time of when the increased traffic would occur.

Another aspect of the disclosure is illustrated in an example. In one case, a small website (we can call it www.smallsite.com) was referenced in the Google™ search engine page. Because of the large number of users of Google, www.smallsite.com went down. To prevent this from happening, when a high traffic source such as www.google.com or www.nytimes.com links to or references a small or low traffic website, then an automatic reservation and provisioning of reserved resources can be performed. For example, if the link from Google to www.smallsite.com were created, and the system (either Google or a special feature available with any website) identified that such a link was established which is likely to cause an increased amount of traffic, then the necessary reservation, provisioning, mirroring of content, and so forth, could occur between the web server 802 and the hosting center 102 and the necessary DNS modifications to enable the off-loading of some or all of the web traffic to the hosting center.

If some of the traffic is routed to the hosting center 102, then provisions are made to send that traffic either directly or indirectly to the reserved, provisioned resources in the hosting center 102. In one aspect, the data is mirrored to the hosting center 102 and the hosting center can exclusively handle the traffic until a certain threshold is met and the web traffic can be automatically transferred back to the web server 802.

The off-loading of web traffic can be featured as an add-on charge available to websites as well as charges or fees for the services that can be used to identify when traffic can increase. External forces (such as mentioning a website on the news) can trigger the increase as well as internal forces. For example, if a special offer is posted on a website for a reduced price for a product, then the website can expect increased traffic. In this regard, there can be a “one-click” option to identify a time period (1 day offloading) and a starting time (2 hours after the offer is posted) for the offloading to occur.

As can be appreciated, the principles of the present disclosure enable the average user “surfing” the web to enjoy access and experience websites that can otherwise be unavailable due to large internet traffic. The benefit certainly inures to website owners and operators who will avoid unwanted down time and the negative impact that can have on their business.

FIG. 9 illustrates a method aspect of the webserver embodiment of the disclosure. Here, a method of managing resources between a webserver and an on-demand compute environment is disclosed with the method including determining whether web traffic directed to the webserver should be at least partially served via the on-demand compute environment (902), reserving resources in the on-demand compute environment to yield reserved resources, provisioning the reserved resources within the on-demand compute environment to enable it to respond to web traffic for the webserver (904), establishing a routing of at least part of the web traffic from the webserver to the provisioned resources in the on-demand compute environment (906) and communicating data between a client browser and the on-demand compute environment such that the use of the on-demand compute environment for the web traffic is transparent (908).

While the claims below are method claims, it is understood that the steps can be practiced by compute modules in a system embodiment of the disclosure as well as being related to instructions for controlling a compute device stored on a computer-readable medium. The disclosure can also include a local compute environment 104 and/or an on-demand center 102 configured to operated as described above. A webserver(s) 802 and/or the on-demand center 102 with any other network nodes configured to enable the offloading of web traffic 806 can also be an embodiment of the disclosure. This can also involve an additional software alteration on a web browser to enable the offloading of web traffic. Further, any hardware system or network can also be embodied in the disclosure.

As mentioned above, the present application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/276,856, which was incorporated herein by reference. The following paragraphs, modified for formatting, are from that application.

An on-demand compute environment comprises a plurality of nodes within an on-demand compute environment available for provisioning and a slave management module operating on a dedicated node within the on-demand compute environment, wherein upon instructions from a master management module at a local compute environment, the slave management module modifies at least one node of the plurality of nodes.

The present invention relates to a resource management system and more specifically to a system and method of providing access to on-demand compute resources.

Managers of clusters desire maximum return on investment often meaning high system utilization and the ability to deliver various qualities of service to various users and groups. A cluster is typically defined as a parallel computer that is constructed of commodity components and runs as its system software commodity software. A cluster contains nodes each containing one or more processors, memory that is shared by all of the processors in the respective node and additional peripheral devices such as storage disks that are connected by a network that allows data to move between nodes. A cluster is one example of a compute environment. Other examples include a grid, which is loosely defined as a group of clusters, and a computer farm which is another organization of computer for processing.

Often a set of resources organized in a cluster or a grid may have jobs to be submitted to the resources that require more capability than the set of resource has available. In this regard, there is a need in the art for being able to easily, efficiently and on-demand be able to utilize new resources or different resources to handle a job. The concept of “on-demand” compute resources has been developing in the high performance computing community recently. An on-demand computing environment enables companies to procure compute power for average demand and then contract remote processing power to help in peak loads or to offload all their compute needs to a remote facility. Several reference books having background material related to on-demand computing or utility computing include Mike Ault, Madhu Tumma, Oracle 10 g Grid & Real Application Clusters, Rampant TechPress, 2004 and Guy Bunker, Darren Thomson, Delivering Utility Computing Business-driven IT Optimization, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2006.

In Bunker and Thompson, section 3.3 on page 32 is entitled “Connectivity: The Great Enabler” wherein they discuss how the interconnecting of computers will dramatically increase their usefulness. This disclosure addresses that issue. There exists in the art a need for improved solutions to enable communication and connectivity with an on-demand high performance computing center.

Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The features and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention as set forth herein.

Various embodiments of the invention include, but are not limited to, methods, systems, computing devices, clusters, grids and computer-readable media that perform the processes and steps described herein.

An on-demand compute environment comprises a plurality of nodes within an on-demand compute environment available for provisioning and a slave management module operating on a dedicated node within the on-demand compute environment, wherein upon instructions from a master management module at a local compute environment, the slave management module modifies at least one node of the plurality of nodes. Methods and computer readable media are also disclosed for managing an on-demand compute environment.

A benefit of the approaches disclosed herein is a reduction in unnecessary costs of building infrastructure to accommodate peak demand. Thus, customers only pay for the extra processing power they need only during those times when they need it.

Various embodiments are discussed in detail below. While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations may be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

This disclosure relates to the access and management of on-demand or utility computing resources at a hosting center. FIG. 1 illustrates the basic arrangement and interaction between a local compute environment 104 and an on-demand hosting center 102. The local compute environment may comprise a cluster, a grid, or any other variation on these types of multiple node and commonly managed environments. The on-demand hosting center or on-demand computing environment 102 comprises a plurality of nodes that are available for provisioning and preferably has a dedicated node containing a hosting master 128 which may comprise a slave management module 106 and/or at least one other module such as the entity manager 128 and node provisioner 118.

Products such as Moab provide an essential service for optimization of a local compute environment. It provides an analysis into how & when local resources, such as software and hardware devices, are being used for the purposes of charge-back, planning, auditing, troubleshooting and reporting internally or externally. Such optimization enables the local environment to be tuned to get the most out of the resources in the local compute environment. However, there are times where more resources are needed.

Typically a hosting center 102 will have the following attributes. It allows an organization to provide resources or services to customers where the resources or services are custom-tailored to the needs of the customer. Supporting true utility computing usually requires creating a hosting center 102 with one or more capabilities as follows: secure remote access, guaranteed resource availability at a fixed time or series of times, integrated auditing/accounting/billing services, tiered service level (QoS/SLA) based resource access, dynamic compute node provisioning, full environment management over compute, network, storage, and application/service based resources, intelligent workload optimization, high availability, failure recovery, and automated re-allocation.

A management module 108 such as, by way of example, Moab™ (which may also refer to any Moab product such as the Moab Workload Manager®, Moab Grid Monitor®, etc. from Cluster Resources, Inc.) enables utility computing by allowing compute resources to be reserved, allocated, and dynamically provisioned to meet the needs of internal or external workload. Thus, at peak workload times, the local compute environment does not need to be built out with peak usage in mind. As periodic peak resources are required, triggers can cause overflow to the on-demand environment and thus save money for the customer. The module 108 is able to respond to either manual or automatically generated requests and can guarantee resource availability subject to existing service level agreement (SLA) or quality of service (QOS) based arrangements. As an example, FIG. 1 shows a user submitting a job or a query 110 to the cluster or local environment 104. The local environment will typically be a cluster or a grid with local workload. Jobs may be submitted which have explicit resource requirements. The local environment 104 will have various attributes such as operating systems, architecture, network types, applications, software, bandwidth capabilities, etc, which are expected by the job implicitly. In other words, jobs will typically expect that the local environment will have certain attributes that will enable it to consume resources in an expected way.

Other software is shown by way of example in a distributed resource manager such as Torque 128 and various nodes 130, 132 and 134. The management modules (both master and/or slave) may interact and operate with any resource manager, such as Torque, LSF, SGE, PBS and LoadLeveler and are agnostic in this regard. Those of skill in the art will recognize these different distributed resource manager software packages.

A hosting master or hosting management module 106 may also be an instance of a Moab software product with hosting center capabilities to enable an organization to dynamically control network, compute, application, and storage resources and to dynamically provision operating systems, security, credentials, and other aspects of a complete end-to-end compute environments. Module 106 is responsible for knowing all the policies, guarantees, promises and also for managing the provisioning of resources within the utility computing space 102. In one sense, module 106 may be referred to as the “master” module in that it couples and needs to know all of the information associated with both the utility environment and the local environment. However, in another sense it may be referred to as the slave module or provisioning broker wherein it takes instructions from the customer management module 108 for provisioning resources and builds whatever environment is requested in the on-demand center 102. A slave module would have none of its own local policies but rather follows all requests from another management module. For example, when module 106 is the slave module, then a master module 108 would submit automated or manual (via an administrator) requests that the slave module 106 simply follows to manage the build out of the requested environment. Thus, for both IT and end users, a single easily usable interface can increase efficiency, reduce costs including management costs and improve investments in the local customer environment. The interface to the local environment which also has the access to the on-demand environment may be a web-interface or access portal as well. Restrictions of feasibility only may exist. The customer module 108 would have rights and ownership of all resources. The allocated resources would not be shared but be dedicated to the requestor. As the slave module 106 follows all directions from the master module 108, any policy restrictions will preferably occur on the master module 108 in the local environment.

The modules also provide data management services that simplify adding resources from across a local environment. For example, if the local environment comprises a wide area network, the management module 108 provides a security model that ensures, when the environment dictates, that administrators can rely on the system even when untrusted resources at the certain level have been added to the local environment or the on-demand environment. In addition, the management modules comply with n-tier web services based architectures and therefore scalability and reporting are inherent parts of the system. A system operating according to the principles set forth herein also has the ability to track, record and archive information about jobs or other processes that have been run on the system.

A hosting center 102 provides scheduled dedicated resources to customers for various purposes and typically has a number of key attributes: secure remote access, guaranteed resource availability at a fixed time or series of times, tightly integrated auditing/accounting services, varying quality of service levels providing privileged access to a set of users, node image management allowing the hosting center to restore an exact customer-specific image before enabling access. Resources available to a module 106, which may also be referred to as a provider resource broker, will have both rigid (architecture, RAM, local disk space, etc.) and flexible (OS, queues, installed applications etc.) attributes. The provider or on-demand resource broker 106 can typically provision (dynamically modify) flexible attributes but not rigid attributes. The provider broker 106 may possess multiple resources each with different types with rigid attributes (i.e., single processor and dual processor nodes, Intel nodes, AMD nodes, nodes with 512 MB RAM, nodes with 1 GB RAM, etc).

This combination of attributes presents unique constraints on a management system. We describe herein how the management modules 108 and 106 are able to effectively manage, modify and provision resources in this environment and provide full array of services on top of these resources.

Utility-based computing technology allows a hosting center 102 to quickly harness existing compute resources, dynamically co-allocate the resources, and automatically provision them into a seamless virtual cluster. The management modules' advanced reservation and policy management tools provide support for the establishment of extensive service level agreements, automated billing, and instant chart and report creation.

Also shown in FIG. 1 are several other components such as an identity manager 112 and a node provisioner 118 as part of the hosting center 102. The hosting master′ 128 may include an identity manager interface 112 that may coordinate global and local information regarding users, groups, accounts, and classes associated with compute resources. The identity manager interface 112 may also allow the management module 106 to automatically and dynamically create and modify user accounts and credential attributes according to current workload needs. The hosting master 128 allows sites extensive flexibility when it comes to defining credential access, attributes, and relationships. In most cases, use of the USERCFG, GROUPCFG, ACCOUNTCFG, CLASSCFG, and QOSCFG parameters is adequate to specify the needed configuration. However, in certain cases, such as the following, this approach may not be ideal or even adequate: environments with very large user sets; environments with very dynamic credential configurations in terms of fairshare targets, priorities, service access constraints, and credential relationships; grid environments with external credential mapping information services; enterprise environments with fairness policies based on multi-cluster usage.

The modules address these and similar issues through the use of the identity manager 112. The identity manager 112 allows the module to exchange information with an external identity management service. As with the module's resource manager interfaces, this service can be a full commercial package designed for this purpose, or something far simpler by which the module obtains the needed information for a web service, text file, or database.

Next attention is turned to the node provisioner 118 and as an example of its operation, the node provisioner 118 can enable the allocation of resources in the hosting center 102 for workload from a local compute environment 104. The customer management module 108 will communicate with the hosting management module 106 to begin the provisioning process. In one aspect, the provisioning module 118 may generate another instance of necessary management software 120 and 122 which will be created in the hosting center environment as well as compute nodes 124 and 126 to be consumed by a submitted job. The new management module 120 is created on the fly, may be associated with a specific request and will preferably be operative on a dedicated node. If the new management module 120 is associated with a specific request or job, as the job consumes the resources associated with the provisioned compute nodes 124, 126, and the job becomes complete, then the system would remove the management module 120 since it was only created for the specific request. The new management module 120 may connect to other modules such as module 108. The module 120 does not necessarily have to be created but may be generated on the fly as necessary to assist in communication and provisioning and use of the resources in the utility environment 102. For example, the module 106 may go ahead and allocate nodes within the utility computing environment 102 and connect these nodes directly to module 108 but in that case you may lose some batch ability as a tradeoff. The hosting master 128 having the management module 106, identity manager 112 and node provisioner 118 preferably is co-located with the utility computing environment but may be distributed. The management module on the local environment 108 may then communicate directly with the created management module 120 in the hosting center to manage the transfer of workload and consumption of on-demand center resources.

FIG. 13 provides an illustration of a method aspect of utilizing the new management module. As shown, this method comprises receiving an instruction at a slave management module associated with an on-demand computing environment from a master management module associated with a local computing environment (1302) and based on the instruction, creating a new management module on a node in the on-demand computing environment and provisioning at least one compute node in the on-demand computing environment, wherein the new management module manages the at least one compute node and communicates with the master management module (1304).

There are two supported primary usage models, a manual and an automatic model. In manual mode, utilizing the hosted resources can be as easy as going to a web site, specifying what is needed, selecting one of the available options, and logging in when the virtual cluster is activated. In automatic mode, it is even simpler. To utilize hosted resources, the user simply submits jobs to the local cluster. When the local cluster can no longer provide an adequate level of service, it automatically contacts the utility hosting center, allocates additional nodes, and runs the jobs. The end user is never aware that the hosting center even exists. He merely notices that the cluster is now bigger and that his jobs are being run more quickly.

When a request for additional resources is made from the local environment, either automatically or manually, a client module or client resource broker (which may be, for example, an instance of a management module 108 or 120) will contact the provider resource broker 106 to request resources. It will send information regarding rigid attributes of needed resources as well as quantity or resources needed, request duration, and request timeframe (i.e., start time, feasible times of day, etc.) It will also send flexible attributes which must be provisioned on the nodes 124, 126. Both flexible and rigid resource attributes can come from explicit workload-specified requirement or from implicit requirements associated with the local or default compute resources. The provider resource broker 106 must indicate if it is possible to locate requested resources within the specified timeframe for sufficient duration and of the sufficient quantity. This task includes matching rigid resource attributes and identifying one or more provisioning steps required to put in place all flexible attributes.

When provider resources are identified and selected, the client resource broker 108 or 120 is responsible for seamlessly integrating these resources in with other local resources. This includes reporting resource quantity, state, configuration and load. This further includes automatically enabling a trusted connection to the allocated resources which can perform last mile customization, data staging, and job staging. Commands are provided to create this connection to the provider resource broker 106, query available resources, allocate new resources, expand existing allocations, reduce existing allocations, and release all allocated resources.

In most cases, the end goal of a hosting center 102 is to make available to a customer, a complete, secure, packaged environment which allows them to accomplish one or more specific tasks. This packaged environment may be called a virtual cluster and may consist of the compute, network, data, software, and other resources required by the customer. For successful operation, these resources must be brought together and provisioned or configured so as to provide a seamless environment which allows the customers to quickly and easily accomplish their desired tasks.

Another aspect of the invention is the cluster interface. The desired operational model for many environments is providing the customer with a fully automated self-service web interface. Once a customer has registered with the host company, access to a hosting center portal is enabled. Through this interface, customers describe their workload requirements, time constraints, and other key pieces of information. The interface communicates with the backend services to determine when, where, and how the needed virtual cluster can be created and reports back a number of options to the user. The user selects the desired option and can monitor the status of that virtual cluster via web and email updates. When the virtual cluster is ready, web and email notification is provided including access information. The customer logs in and begins working.

The hosting center 102 will have related policies and service level agreements. Enabling access in a first come-first served model provides real benefits but in many cases, customers require reliable resource access with guaranteed responsiveness. These requirements may be any performance, resource or time based rule such as in the following examples: I need my virtual cluster within 24 hours of asking; I want a virtual cluster available from 2 to 4 PM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; I want to always have a virtual cluster available and automatically grow/shrink it based on current load, etc.

Quality of service or service level agreement policies allow customers to convert the virtual cluster resources to a strategic part of their business operations greatly increasing the value of these resources. Behind the scenes, a hosting center 102 consists of resource managers, reservations, triggers, and policies. Once configured, administration of such a system involves addressing reported resource failures (i.e., disk failures, network outages, etc) and monitoring delivered performance to determine if customer satisfaction requires tuning policies or adding resources.

The modules associated with the local environment 104 and the hosting center environment 102 may be referred to as a master module 108 and a slave module 106. This terminology relates to the functionality wherein the hosting center 102 receives requests for workload and provisioning of resources from the module 108 and essentially follows those requests. In this regard, the module 108 may be referred to as a client resource broker 108 which will contact a provider resource broker 106 (such as an On-Demand version of Moab).

The management module 108 may also be, by way of example, a Moab Workload Manager® operating in a master mode. The management module 108 communicates with the compute environment to identify resources, reserve resources for consumption by jobs, provision resources and in general manage the utilization of all compute resources within a compute environment. As can be appreciated by one of skill in the art, these modules may be programmed in any programming language, such as C or C++ and which language is immaterial to the invention.

In a typical operation, a user or a group submits a job to a local compute environment 104 via an interface to the management module 108. An example of a job is a submission of a computer program that will perform a weather analysis for a television station that requires the consumption of a large amount of compute resources. The module 108 and/or an optional scheduler 128 such as TORQUE, as those of skill in the art understand, manages the reservation of resources and the consumption of resources within the environment 104 in an efficient manner that complies with policies and restrictions. The use of a resource manager like TORQUE 128 is optional and not specifically required as part of the disclosure.

A user or a group of users will typically enter into a service level agreement (SLA) which will define the policies and guarantees for resources on the local environment 104. For example, the SLA may provide that the user is guaranteed 10 processors and 50 GB of hard drive space within 5 hours of a submission of a job request. Associated with any user may be many parameters related to permissions, guarantees, priority level, time frames, expansion factors, and so forth. The expansion factor is a measure of how long the job is taking to run on a local environment while sharing the environment with other jobs versus how long it would take if the cluster was dedicated to the job only. It therefore relates to the impact of other jobs on the performance of the particular job. Once a job is submitted and will sit in a job queue waiting to be inserted into the cluster 104 to consume those resources. The management software will continuously analyze the environment 104 and make reservations of resources to seek to optimize the consumption of resources within the environment 104. The optimization process must take into account all the SLA's of users, other policies of the environment 104 and other factors.

As introduced above, this disclosure provides improvements in the connectivity between a local environment 104 and an on-demand center 102. The challenges that exist in accomplishing such a connection include managing all of the capabilities of the various environments, their various policies, current workload, workload queued up in the job queues and so forth.

As a general statement, disclosed herein is a method and system for customizing an on-demand compute environment based on both implicit and explicit job or request requirements. For example, explicit requirements may be requirements specified with a job such as a specific number of nodes or processor and a specific amount of memory. Many other attributes or requirements may be explicitly set forth with a job submission such as requirements set forth in an SLA for that user. Implicit requirements may relate to attributes of the compute environment that the job is expecting because of where it is submitted. For example, the local compute environment 104 may have particular attributes, such as, for example, a certain bandwidth for transmission, memory, software licenses, processors and processor speeds, hard drive memory space, and so forth. Any parameter that may be an attribute of the local environment in which the job is submitted may relate to an implicit requirement. As a local environment 104 communicates with an on-demand environment 102 for the transfer of workload, the implicit and explicit requirements are seamlessly imported into the on-demand environment 102 such that the user's job can efficiently consume resources in the on-demand environment 102 because of the customization of that environment for the job. This seamless communication occurs between a master module 108 and a slave module 106 in the respective environments. As shown in FIG. 1 , a new management module 120 may also be created for a specific process or job and also communicate with a master module 108 to manage the provisioning, consumption and clean up of compute nodes 124, 126 in the on-demand environment 102.

Part of the seamless communication process includes the analysis and provisioning of resources taking into account the need to identify resources such as hard drive space and bandwidth capabilities to actually perform the transfer of the workload. For example, if it is determined that a job in the queue has a SLA that guarantees resources within 5 hours of the request, and based on the analysis by the management module of the local environment the resources cannot be available for 8 hours, and if such a scenario is at triggering event, then the automatic and seamless connectivity with the on-demand center 102 will include an analysis of how long it will take to provision an environment in the on-demand center that matches or is appropriate for the job to run. That process, of provisioning the environment in the on-demand center 102, and transferring workload from the local environment 104 to the on-demand center 102, may take, for example, 1 hour. In that case, the on-demand center will begin the provisioning process one hour before the 5 hour required time such that the provisioning of the environment and transfer of data can occur to meet the SLA for that user. This provisioning process may involve reserving resources within the on-demand center 102 from the master module 108 as will be discussed more below.

FIG. 10 illustrates an embodiment in this regard, wherein a method comprises detecting an event in a local compute environment (1002). The event may be a resource need event such as a current resource need or a predicted resource need. Based on the detected event, a module automatically establishes communication with an on-demand compute environment (1004). This may also involve dynamically negotiating and establishing a grid/peer relationship based on the resource need event. A module provisions resources within the on-demand compute environment (1006) and workload is transferred from the local-environment transparently to the on-demand compute environment (1008). Preferably, local information is imported to the on-demand environment and on-demand information is communicated to the local compute environment, although only local environment information may be needed to be transmitted to the on-demand environment. Typically, at least local environment information is communicated and also job information may be communicated to the on-demand environment. Examples of local environment information may be at least one of class information, configuration policy information and other information. Information from the on-demand center may relate to at least one of resources, availability of resources, time frames associated with resources and any other kind of data that informs the local environment of the opportunity and availability of the on-demand resources. The communication and management of the data between the master module or client module in the local environment and the slave module is preferably transparent and unknown to the user who submitted the workload to the local environment. However, one aspect may provide for notice to the user of the tapping into the on-demand resources and the progress and availability of those resources.

Example triggering events may be related to at least one of a resource threshold, a service threshold, workload and a policy threshold or other factors. Furthermore, the event may be based one of all workload associated with the local compute environment or a subset of workload associated with the compute environment or any other subset of a given parameter or may be external to the compute environment such as a natural disaster or power outage or predicted event.

The disclosure below provides for various aspects of this connectivity process between a local environment 104 and an on-demand center 102. The CD submitted with the priority Provisional Patent Application includes source code that carries out this functionality. The various aspects will include an automatic triggering approach to transfer workload from the local environment 104 to the on-demand center 102, a manual “one-click” method of integrating the on-demand compute environment 102 with the local environment 104 and a concept related to reserving resources in the on-demand compute environment 102 from the local compute environment 104.

The first aspect relates to enabling the automatic detection of a triggering event such as passing a resource threshold or service threshold within the compute environment 104. This process may be dynamic and involve identifying resources in a hosting center, allocating resources and releasing them after consumption. These processes may be automated based on a number of factors, such as: workload and credential performance thresholds; a job's current time waiting in the queue for execution, (queuetime) (i.e., allocate if a job has waited more than 20 minutes to receive resources); a job's current expansion factor which relates to a comparison of the affect of other jobs consuming local resources has on the particular job in comparison to a value if the job was the only job consuming resources in the local environment; a job's current execution load (i.e., allocate if load on job's allocated resources exceeds 0.9); quantity of backlog workload (i.e., allocate if more than 50,000 proc-hours of workload exist); a job's average response time in handling transactions (i.e., allocate if job reports it is taking more than 0.5 seconds to process transaction); a number of failures workload has experienced (i.e., allocate if a job cannot start after 10 attempts); overall system utilization (i.e., allocate if more than 80% of machine is utilized) and so forth. This is an example list and those of skill in the art will recognize other factors that may be identified as triggering events.

Other triggering events or thresholds may comprise a predicted workload performance threshold. This would relate to the same listing of events above but be applied in the context of predictions made by a management module or customer resource broker.

Another listing of example events that may trigger communication with the hosting center include, but are not limited to events such as resource failures including compute nodes, network, storage, license (i.e., including expired licenses); service failures including DNS, information services, web services, database services, security services; external event detected (i.e., power outage or national emergency reported) and so forth. These triggering events or thresholds may be applied to allocate initial resources, expand allocated resources, reduce allocated resources and release all allocated resources. Thus, while the primary discussion herein relates to an initial allocation of resources, these triggering events may cause any number of resource-related actions. Events and thresholds may also be associated with any subset of jobs or nodes (i.e., allocate only if threshold backlog is exceeded on high priority jobs only or jobs from a certain user or project or allocate resources only if certain service nodes fail or certain licenses become unavailable.)

For example, if a threshold of 95% of processor consumption is met by 951 processors out of the 1000 processors in the environment are being utilized, then the system (which may or may not include the management module 108) automatically establishes a connection with the on-demand environment 102. Another type of threshold may also trigger the automatic connection such as a service level received threshold, a service level predicted threshold, a policy-based threshold, a threshold or event associated with environment changes such as a resource failure (compute node, network storage device, or service failures).

In a service level threshold, one example is where a SLA specifies a certain service level requirement for a customer, such as resources available within 5 hours. If an actual threshold is not met, i.e., a job has waited now for 5 hours without being able to consume resource, or where a threshold is predicted to not be met, these can be triggering events for communication with the on-demand center. The module 108 then communicates with the slave manager 106 to provision or customize the on-demand resources 102. The two environments exchange the necessary information to create reservations of resources, provision, handle licensing, and so forth, necessary to enable the automatic transfer of jobs or other workload from the local environment 104 to the on-demand environment 102. For a particular task or job, all or part of the workload may be transferred to the on-demand center. Nothing about a user job 110 submitted to a management module 108 changes. The on-demand environment 102 then instantly begins running the job without any change in the job or perhaps even any knowledge of the submitter.

There are several aspects of the disclosure that are shown in the source code on the CD. One is the ability to exchange information. For example, for the automatic transfer of workload to the on-demand center, the system will import remote classes, configuration policy information and other information from the local scheduler 108 to the slave scheduler 106 for use by the on-demand environment 102. Information regarding the on-demand compute environment, resources, policies and so forth are also communicated from the slave module 106 to the local module 108.

The triggering event for the automatic establishment of communication with the on-demand center and a transfer of workload to the on-demand center may be a threshold that has been passed or an event that occurred. Threshold values may comprise an achieved service level, predicted service level and so forth. For example, a job sitting in a queue for a certain amount of time may trigger a process to contact the on-demand center and transfer that job to the on-demand center to run. If a queue has a certain number of jobs that have not been submitted to the compute environment for processing, if a job has an expansion factor that has a certain value, if a job has failed to start on a local cluster one or more times for whatever reason, then these types of events may trigger communication with the on-demand center. These have been examples of threshold values that when passed will trigger communication with the on-demand environment.

Example events that also may trigger the communication with the on-demand environment include, but are not limited to, events such as the failure of nodes within the environment, storage failure, service failure, license expiration, management software failure, resource manager fails, etc. In other words, any event that may be related to any resource or the management of any resource in the compute environment may be a qualifying event that may trigger workload transfer to an on-demand center. In the license expiration context, if the license in a local environment of a certain software package is going to expire such that a job cannot properly consume resources and utilize the software package, the master module 108 can communicate with the slave module 106 to determine if the on-demand center has the requisite license for that software. If so, then the provisioning of the resources in the on-demand center can be negotiated and the workload transferred wherein it can consume resources under an appropriate legal and licensed framework.

The basis for the threshold or the event that triggers the communication, provisioning and transfer of workload to the on-demand center may be all jobs/workload associated with the local compute environment or a subset of jobs/workload associated with the local compute environment. In other words, the analysis of when an event and/or threshold should trigger the transfer of workload may be based on a subset of jobs. For example, the analysis may be based on all jobs submitted from a particular person or group or may be based on a certain type of job, such as the subset of jobs that will require more than 5 hours of processing time to run. Any parameter may be defined for the subset of jobs used to base the triggering event.

The interaction and communication between the local compute environment and the on-demand compute environment enables an improved process for dynamically growing and shirking provisioned resource space based on load. This load balancing between the on-demand center and the local environment may be based on thresholds, events, all workload associated with the local environment or a subset of the local environment workload.

Another aspect of the disclosure is the ability to automate data management between two sites. This involves the transparent handling of data management between the on-demand environment 102 and the local environment 104 that is transparent to the user. Typically environmental information will always be communicated between the local environment 104 and the on-demand environment 102. In some cases, job information may not need to be communicated because a job may be gathering its own information, say from the Internet, or for other reasons. Therefore, in preparing to provision resources in the on-demand environment all information or a subset of information is communicated to enable the process. Yet another aspect of the invention relates to a simple and easy mechanism to enable on-demand center integration. This aspect of the invention involves the ability of the user or an administrator to, in a single action like the click of a button or a one-click action, be able to command the integration of an on-demand center information and capability into the local resource manager 108.

This feature is illustrated in FIG. 11 . A module, preferably associated with the local compute environment, receives a request from an administrator to integrate an on-demand compute environment into the local compute environment (1102). The creation of a reservation or of a provisioning of resources in the on-demand environment may be from a request from an administrator or local or remote automated broker. In this regard, the various modules will automatically integrate local compute environment information with on-demand compute environment information to make available resources from the on-demand compute environment to requestors of resources in the local compute environment (1104). Integration of the on-demand compute environment may provide for integrating: resource configuration, state information, resource utilization reporting, job submission information, job management information resource management, policy controls including priority, resource ownership, queue configuration, job accounting and tracking and resource accounting and tracking. Thus, the detailed analysis and tracking of jobs and resources may be communicated back from the on-demand center to the local compute environment interface. Furthermore, this integration process may also include a step of automatically creating at least one of a data migration interface and a job migration interface.

Another aspect provides for a method of integrating an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment. The method comprises receiving a request from an administrator or via an automated command from an event trigger or administrator action to integrate an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment. In response to the request, local workload information and/or resource configuration information is routed to an on-demand center and an environment is created and customized in the on-demand center that is compatible with workload requirements submitted to the local compute environment. Billing and costing are also automatically integrated and handled.

The exchange and integration of all the necessary information and resource knowledge may be performed in a single action or click to broaden the set of resources that may be available to users who have access initially only to the local compute environment 104. The system may receive the request to integrate an on-demand compute environment into a local compute environment in other manners as well, such as any type of multi-modal request, voice request, graffiti on a touch-sensitive screen request, motion detection, and so forth. Thus the one-click action may be a single tap on a touch sensitive display or a single voice command such as “integrate” or another command or multi-modal input that is simple and singular in nature. In response to the request, the system automatically integrates the local compute environment information with the on-demand compute environment information to enable resources from the on-demand compute environment available to requestors of resources in the local compute environment.

The one-click approach relates to the automated approach expect a human is in the middle of the process. For example, if a threshold or a triggering event is passed, an email or a notice may be sent to an administrator with options to allocate resources from the on-demand center. The administrator may be presented with one or more options related to different types of allocations that are available in the on-demand center—and via one-click or one action the administrator may select the appropriate action. For example, three options may include 500 processors in 1 hour; 700 processors in 2 hours; and 1000 processors in 10 hours. The options may be intelligent in that they may take into account the particular triggering event, costs of utilizing the on-demand environment, SLAs, policies, and any other parameters to present options that comply with policies and available resources. The administrator may be given a recommended selection based on SLAs, cost, or any other parameters discussed herein but may then choose the particular allocation package for the on-demand center. The administrator also may have an option, without an alert, to view possible allocation packages in the on-demand center if the administrator knows of an upcoming event that is not capable of being detected by the modules, such as a meeting with a group wherein they decide to submit a large job the next day which will clearly require on-demand resources. The one-click approach encapsulates the command line instruction to proceed with the allocation of on-demand resources.

One of the aspects of the disclosure is the integration of an on-demand environment 102 and a local compute environment 104 is that the overall data appears locally. In other words, the local scheduler 108 will have access to the resources and knowledge of the on-demand environment 102 but those resources, with the appropriate adherence to local policy requirements, is handled locally and appears locally to users and administrators of the local environment 104.

Another aspect of the invention that is enabled with the attached source code is the ability to specify configuration information and feeding it down the line. For example, the interaction between the compute environments supports static reservations. A static reservation is a reservation that a user or an administrator cannot change, remove or destroy. It is a reservation that is associated with the resource manager 108 itself. A static reservation blocks out time frames when resources are not available for other uses. For example, if to enable a compute environment to have workload run on (or consume) resources, a job takes an hour to provision a resources, then the module 108 may make a static reservation of resources for the provisioning process. The module 108 will locally create a static reservation for the provisioning component of running the job. The module 108 will report on these constraints associated with the created static reservation within the on-demand compute environment.

Then, the module 108 will communicate with the slave module 106 if on-demand resources are needed to run a job. The module 108 communicates with the slave module 106 and identifies what resources are needed (20 processors and 512 MB of memory, for example) and inquires when can those resources be available. Assume that module 106 responds that the processors and memory will be available in one hour and that the module 108 can have those resources for 36 hours. Once all the appropriate information has been communicated between the modules 106 and 108, then module 108 creates a static reservation to block the first part of the resources which requires the one hour of provisioning. The module 108 may also block out the resources with a static reservation from hour 36 to infinity until the resources go away. Therefore, from zero to one hour is blocked out by a static reservation and from the end of the 36 hours to infinity is blocked out. In this way, the scheduler 108 can optimize the on-demand resources and insure that they are available for local workloads. The communication between the modules 106 and 108 is performed preferably via tunneling.

Another aspect relates to receiving requests or information associated with resources in an on-demand center. An example will illustrate. Assume that a company has a reservation of resources within an on-demand center but then finds out that their budget is cut for the year. There is a mechanism for an administrator to enter information such as a request for a cancellation of a reservation so that they do not have to pay for the consumption of those resources. Any type of modification of the on-demand resources may be contemplated here. This process involves translating a current or future state of the environment for a requirement of the modification of usable resources. Another example includes where a group determines that they will run a large job over the weekend that will knowingly need more than the local environment. An administrator can submit in the local resource broker 108 a submission of information associated with a parameter-such as a request for resources and the local broker 108 will communicate with the hosting center 106 and the necessary resources can be reserved in the on-demand center even before the job is submitted to the local environment.

The modification of resources within the on-demand center may be an increase, decrease, or cancellation of resources or reservations for resources. The parameters may be a direct request for resources or a modification of resources or may be a change in an SLA which then may trigger other modifications. For example, if an SLA prevented a user from obtaining more than 500 nodes in an on-demand center and a current reservation has maximized this request, a change in the SLA agreement that extended this parameter may automatically cause the module 106 to increase the reservation of nodes according to the modified SLA. Changing policies in this manner may or may not affect the resources in the on-demand center.

FIG. 12 illustrates a method embodiment related to modifying resources in the on-demand compute environment. The method comprises receiving information at a local resource broker that is associated with resources within an on-demand compute environment (1202). Based on the information, the method comprises communicating instructions from the local resource broker to the on-demand compute environment (1204) and modifying resources associated with the on-demand compute environment based on the instructions (1206). As mentioned above, examples of the type of information that may be received include information associated with a request for a new reservation, a cancellation of an existing reservation, or a modification of a reservation such as expanding or contracting the reserved resources in the on-demand compute environment. Other examples include a revised policy or revision to an SLA that alters (increases or perhaps decreases) allowed resources that may be reserved in the on-demand center. The master module 108 will then provide instructions to the slave module 106 to create or modify reservations in the on-demand computing environment or to make some other alteration to the resources as instructed.

Receiving resource requirement information may be based on user specification, current or predicted workload. The specification of resources may be fully explicit, or may be partially or fully implicit based on workload or based on virtual private cluster (VPC) package concept where VPC package can include aspects of allocated or provisioning support environment and adjustments to resource request timeframes including pre-allocation, allocation duration, and post-allocation timeframe adjustments. The Application incorporated above provides information associated with the VPC that may be utilized in many respects in this invention. The reserved resources may be associated with provisioning or customizing the delivered compute environment. A reservation may involve the co-allocation of resources including any combination of compute, network, storage, license, or service resources (i.e., parallel database services, security services, provisioning services) as part of a reservation across multiple different resource types. Also, the co-allocation of resources over disjoint timeframes to improve availability and utilization of resources may be part of a reservation or a modification of resources. Resources may also be reserved with automated failure handling and resource recovery.

Another feature associated with reservations of resources within the on-demand environment is the use of provisioning padding. This is an alternate approach to the static reservation discussed above. For example, if a reservation of resources would require 2 hours of processing time for 5 nodes, then that reservation may be created in the on-demand center as directed by the client resource broker 108. As part of that same reservation or as part of a separate process, the reservation may be modified or adjusted to increase its duration to accommodate for provisioning overhead and clean up processes. Therefore, there may need to be h hour of time in advance of the beginning of the two hour block wherein data transmission, operating system set up, or any other provisioning step needs to occur. Similarly, at the end of the two hours, there may need to be 15 minutes to clean up the nodes and transmit processed data to storage or back to the local compute environment. Thus, an adjustment of the reservation may occur to account for this provisioning in the on-demand environment. This may or may not occur automatically, for example, the user may request resources for 2 hours and the system may automatically analyze the job submitted or utilize other information to automatically adjust the reservation for the provisioning needs. The administrator may also understand the provisioning needs and specifically request a reservation with provisioning pads on one or both ends of the reservation.

A job may also be broken into component parts and only one aspect of the job transferred to an on-demand center for processing. In that case, the modules will work together to enable co-allocation of resources across local resources and on-demand resources. For example, memory and processors may be allocated in the local environment while disk space is allocated in the on-demand center. In this regard, the local management module could request the particular resources needed for the co-allocation from the on-demand center and when the job is submitted for processing that portion of the job would consume on-demand center resources while the remaining portion of the job consumes local resources. This also may be a manual or automated process to handle the co-allocation of resources.

Another aspect relates to interaction between the master management module 106 and the slave management module 106. Assume a scenario where the local compute environment requests immediate resources from the on-demand center. Via the communication between the local and the on-demand environments, the on-demand environment notifies the local environment that resources are not available for eight hours but provides the information about those resources in the eight hours. At the local environment, the management module 108 may instruct the on-demand management module 106 to establish a reservation for those resources as soon as possible (in eight hours) including, perhaps, provisioning padding for overhead. Thus, although the local environment requested immediate resources from the on-demand center, the best that could be done in this case is a reservation of resources in eight hours given the provisioning needs and other workload and jobs running on the on-demand center. Thus, jobs running or in the queue at the local environment will have an opportunity to tap into the reservation and given a variety of parameters, say job number 12 has priority or an opportunity to get a first choice of those reserved resources.

With reference to FIG. 2 , an exemplary system for implementing the invention includes a general purpose computing device 200, including a processing unit (CPU) 220, a system memory 230, and a system bus 210 that couples various system components including the system memory 230 to the processing unit 220. The system bus 210 may be any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. The system may also include other memory such as read only memory (ROM) 240 and random access memory (RAM) 250. A basic input/output (BIOS), containing the basic routine that helps to transfer information between elements within the computing device 200, such as during start-up, is typically stored in ROM 240. The computing device 200 further includes storage means such as a hard disk drive 260, a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, tape drive or the like. The storage device 260 is connected to the system bus 210 by a drive interface. The drives and the associated computer-readable media provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the computing device 200. In this regard, the various functions associated with the invention that are primarily set forth as the method embodiment of the invention may be practiced by using any programming language and programming modules to perform the associated operation within the system or the compute environment. Here the compute environment may be a cluster, grid, or any other type of coordinated commodity resources and may also refer to two separate compute environments that are coordinating workload, workflow and so forth such as a local compute environment and an on-demand compute environment. Any such programming module will preferably be associated with a resource management or workload manager or other compute environment management software such as Moab but may also be separately programmed. The basic components are known to those of skill in the art and appropriate variations are contemplated depending on the type of device, such as whether the device is a small, handheld computing device, a desktop computer, or a computer server.

Although the exemplary environment described herein employs the hard disk, it should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other types of computer readable media which can store data that is accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, memory cartridges, random access memories (RAMs) read only memory (ROM), and the like, may also be used in the exemplary operating environment. The system above provides an example server or computing device that may be utilized and networked with a cluster, clusters or a grid to manage the resources according to the principles set forth herein. It is also recognized that other hardware configurations may be developed in the future upon which the method may be operable.

Embodiments within the scope of the present disclosure can also include transitory or non-transitory computer-readable media for carrying or having computer-executable instructions or data structures stored thereon. Such computer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessed by a general purpose or special purpose computer. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable media can include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to carry or store desired program code means in the form of computer-executable instructions or data structures. When information is transferred or provided over a network or another communications connection (either hardwired, wireless, or combination thereof) to a computer, the computer properly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Thus, any such connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of the computer-readable media. Non-transitory computer readable media excludes energy and signals per se.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions and data which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function or group of functions. Computer-executable instructions also include program modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or network environments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, and data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executable instructions, associated data structures, and program modules represent examples of the program code means for executing steps of the methods disclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executable instructions or associated data structures represents examples of corresponding acts for implementing the functions described in such steps.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that other embodiments of the disclosure can be practiced in network computing environments with many types of computer system configurations, including personal computers, hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. Embodiments can also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by local and remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwired links, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules can be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

Although the above description can contain specific details, they should not be construed as limiting the claims in any way. Other configurations of the described embodiments of the disclosure are part of the scope of this disclosure. Accordingly, the appended claims and their legal equivalents should only define the disclosure, rather than any specific examples given. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computerized apparatus configured for communication with a first compute environment, the computerized apparatus associated with an external compute environment separate from the first compute environment, the computerized apparatus comprising: a processor; and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the computerized apparatus to perform operations comprising: receive data relating to at least one resource requirement for processing workload; cause creation of a specification of resources to process the workload; cause transmission of at least a portion of the specification of resources from a first computerized process of the computerized apparatus to a second computerized process operative on at least one computerized apparatus in the first compute environment, the transmission of the at least portion of the specification of resources enabling the first compute environment to determine a required configuration of at least a portion of the first compute environment; and cause transfer of at least a portion of the workload to the first compute environment for processing by at least the configured at least portion thereof.
 2. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the external compute environment comprises a compute environment having a plurality of commonly managed compute resources, and the first compute environment comprises an on-demand compute environment that is separately managed from the local compute environment.
 3. The computerized apparatus of claim 2, wherein the at least portion of the specification of resources is configured to cause creation of at least one virtual cluster within the first compute environment, the creation of the at least one virtual cluster comprising dynamic selection of a plurality of compute resources, and provisioning of the selected compute resources for use by at least part of the workload.
 4. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least portion of the specification of resources is configured to cause dynamic co-allocation of a plurality of compute resources, and provisioning of the co-allocated compute resources for use by the at least portion of the workload.
 5. The computerized apparatus of claim 4, wherein the co-allocated plurality of compute resources are for exclusive use by the at least portion of the workload.
 6. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the computerized apparatus to receive data communications at the first computerized process from the first compute environment indicating that the first compute environment has been reconfigured after the at least portion of the workload has been processed.
 7. The computerized apparatus of claim 6, wherein the reconfiguration of the first compute environment after the at least portion of the workload has been processed comprises removal of a third computerized process, the third computerized process having been dynamically created by the second computerized process based at least on the at least portion of the specification of resources.
 8. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least portion of the specification of resources comprises both (i) data relating to the at least one explicit resource requirement, and (ii) data relating to at least one second resource requirement, the at least one second resource requirement based at least on one or more attributes of the external compute environment.
 9. The computerized apparatus of claim 8, wherein the at least one second resource requirement based at least on one or more attributes of the external compute environment comprises at least one rigid resource requirement relating to one or more compute processors.
 10. The computerized apparatus of claim 8, wherein the at least one implicit resource requirement comprises at least one resource requirement relating to at least one of an operating system (OS) or a network type.
 11. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least portion of the specification of resources is configured to cause creation of a management module on a second computerized apparatus in the first compute environment, the management module configured to manage at least one compute node in the first compute environment to process the at least portion of the workload.
 12. The computerized apparatus of claim 11, wherein the creation of the management module on a second computerized apparatus in the first compute environment comprises dynamic creation of one or more new software instances on one or more respective ones of nodes within the first compute environment.
 13. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the creation of the specification of resources is performed dynamically in preparation for an assumption of at least a portion of the workload by the first compute environment; and the specification of resources comprises at least one resource requirement which is based at least on one or more attributes of the external compute environment, the at least one resource requirement relating to one or more compute processors.
 14. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the computerized apparatus to (i) identify one or more resource constraints associated with processing the at least portion of the workload within the first compute environment, and (ii) cause dynamic modification of at least a portion of the first compute environment based at least on the identified one or more resource constraints.
 15. The computerized apparatus of claim 14, wherein: the identification of the one or more resource constraints comprises identification of one or more resource provisioning requirements necessary for processing of the workload by the at least one compute node; and the dynamic modification is performed response to the transmitted at least portion of the specification of resources.
 16. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least portion of the specification of resources comprises data relating to at least one explicit resource requirement; and the data relating to at least one explicit resource requirement comprises user-specified data submitted via a computerized job request to the external compute environment, the user-specified data comprising data rigidly requiring at least one of computer processor or memory requirements.
 17. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the causation of creation of a specification of resources to process the workload is pursuant to (i) notification of a user submitting the workload for processing that additional compute resources are required to process the job, and (ii) affirmative action by the notified user acknowledging or requesting the additional compute resources.
 18. The computerized apparatus of claim 17, wherein the notification of a user submitting the workload for processing that additional compute resources are required to process the job comprises notification of only a subset of the compute resources of the first compute environment, the subset selected based at least on an accessibility of the subset for use by the user.
 19. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the determination of a required configuration of at least a portion of the first compute environment comprises identification of a subset of the compute resources of the first compute environment, the identification based at least on an availability of the subset for use by a user submitting the data relating to at least one resource requirement for processing the workload.
 20. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the determination of a required configuration of at least a portion of the first compute environment comprises creation of at least one virtual cluster within the first compute environment, the creation of the at least one virtual cluster comprising dynamic selection of a plurality of compute resources that are only a subset of total compute resources of the first compute environment, and provisioning of the selected compute resources for use by at least the at least portion of the workload.
 21. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein: the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the computerized apparatus to perform a determination that compute resources in addition to those of the external environment are required to process the workload; and at least the causation of creation of the specification of resources to process the workload is based at least on the determination; and both the causation of creation of the specification of resources to process the workload and the causation of transfer of the at least a portion of the workload to the first compute environment are each automated such that neither requires user intervention.
 22. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first computerized process of the computerized apparatus comprises a security model configured to account for addition of one or more untrusted resources to at least one of the external compute environment or the first compute environment.
 23. The computerized apparatus of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further configured to, when executed by the processor, cause the computerized apparatus to cause placement of one or more resources within the first compute environment in a reserved state for use by at least the transferred at least portion of the workload at a time after the reserved state is entered.
 24. The computerized apparatus of claim 23, wherein the causation of placement of one or more resources within the first compute environment in a reserved state for use by at least the transferred at least portion of the workload comprises creation of a reservation object, at least a portion of the reservation object configured to be transmitted to the second compute environment to effect the placement of the one or more resources into the reserved state.
 25. A method of operating a computerized apparatus within a first compute environment to cause execution of workload at least in a second compute environment, the method comprising: receiving data relating to at least one explicit resource requirement for processing workload; causing creation of a specification of resources, the specification of resources comprising at least a portion of the data relating to the at least one explicit resource requirement for processing the workload; causing transmission of at least a portion of the specification of resources from a first module of the computerized apparatus to a second module operating in the second compute environment, the specification of resources configured to cause creation of a new software instance in the second compute environment, the new software instance associated with at least one compute node in the second compute environment configured to process the at least portion of the workload; and causing transfer of at least a portion of the workload to the second compute environment for processing using at least the new software instance and the at least one compute node.
 26. The method of claim 25, wherein: the at least a portion of the specification of resources is configured to, after said transfer, cause automatic removal of the new software instance after completion of the processing; and the method further comprises receiving data communications from the second compute environment indicating that the new software instance has been removed from the second compute environment after the completion.
 27. The method of claim 25, wherein: the causation of creation of the new software instance in the second compute environment comprises causation of creation of a new software instance that is associated particularly with at least a portion of the workload; and the method further comprises: (i) identifying one or more resource provisioning requirements necessary for processing of the workload by the at least one compute node, and (ii) causing dynamic modification of at least a portion of the second compute environment based at least on the identified one or more resource provisioning requirements. 